Tragic Books for a Good Cry

One accidentally delivered letter, one misunderstood moment seen through a window, and one terrible lie tear apart the lives two lovers had hoped to share together. Their stories are wretched, but you’ll have to read to the end to see how far they’re taken from their happy ending.

When you see Thomas Hardy’s name on the author line, you know the book isn’t going to end well. In this tragic story of a young woman’s ruin after being sexually assaulted, Hardy navigates the terrible unfairness of the class divide and sexual morals of Victorian England.

A world where every human has a clone raised purely to donate organs is pretty unsettling, but this novel is actually less about ethics than it is about living on limited time. The characters fall in love, have dreams, and set goals that they will never have time to fulfill.

This tearjerking love story tells the story of Louisa Clark, a woman living a normal life, until she decides to take a job as a caretaker. Will Traynor is wheelchair-bound after an accident forced him to abandon the glamorous life he knew. Their story asks impossible questions and presents difficult choices. Tissues are a must-have.

When Bruno’s father is commanded by the “Fury” to oversee “Out-With,” Bruno is forced to move to Poland. Lonely, he’s jealous of the children in striped pajamas he can see from his window. The horror of Auschwitz is even more harrowing when contrasted with the innocence of a child.

This supernatural novel comprises a distressing and brutal exploration of slavery and racism, and a discussion of the extent of motherly love. It’s not an easy read, but its unflinching dissection of a true and terrible history is powerful, relevant, and important.

From the first page, we are told that when William Stoner died, “few students remembered him,” his colleagues “speak of him rarely,” and his name “evokes no sense of the past.” Then begins a book of unbearably hopeful ambition, as Stoner chases the life we know he will never achieve.